Old and Free: Flash Fiction

Old and Free: Flash Fiction.

Her song finds the spiders each morning, moves along the webs until they quaver. It doesn’t occur to her to dust or hoover the creatures away. They are hers. She admires their composition. Legs, a bare tremble. Heads, like black tears.

Despite this appreciation of the macabre, she holds no menace of her own. She is all about the day to day: the boiling of hankies . . . stew . . . more hankies . . . a joint, overdue its sell by date.

She has a garden and loves the feel of chill grass under her feet. When the sun mellows she shakes off cracked sandals, flexes her withered toes.

She has grown old and free with time, stretching way beyond her husband and only child. She cannot bring herself to miss them. Instead, she whiles away.

Home is a docile animal, easily chastened, made comfortable by small touches: a wipe of a surface, a polish of an ornament.

She has a china army on her mantelpiece, curious figurines that mark each milestone of her life: christening, communion, confirmation, wedding. She even has a bell to remind her of the funerals. It wouldn’t do to forget the chimes.

When they come for her she will be gnarled and curled like seaweed, fetid with too many alone hours. Until then, she will sing.

This story features as part of Flash Mob 2013. The Mob is a Blog Carnival, which collects stories from all over the world.

K. S. Moore is a Welsh Poet and Writer, based in Ireland. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Stinging Fly, Southword and Crannog.Online magazines: Nutshells and Nuggets, And Other Poems, and Ink Sweat and Tears have also featured poems. Meanwhile, flash fiction and short stories have been published in FlashFlood, Metazen, Number Eleven and The Bohemyth.K. S. Moore has been shortlisted for Flash Mob 2013, Blog Awards Ireland and 99 Fiction. She has performed at Waterford Writers' Weekend, Waterford Winterval and Swansea's Dylan Thomas Festival.